"That's not how publishing works."
"No. But it's how making things works." He picked up his coffee, found it empty, set it back down. "I play guitar in a band. We've been together almost twelve years. We tour most of the year, put out a record every couple of years. Nothing you'd hear on the radio, but we've built something real. Enough of a following that this is all I do." No false modesty in it. "We're doing a summer residency at the Hard Rock in Atlantic City this year. Thursdays through August."
That explained the calluses on his fingertips.
"That sounds amazing."
"It is. It was." He ran a hand through his hair. "But lately I've been writing stuff that doesn't fit what we do. Different sound, different feel. The guys aren't sure about it." He shrugged. "So I started slipping one or two into the sets anyway. To see what happens."
"So what do you do?"
"Come here. Stare at the screen. Read someone else's book and feel jealous of how easily it seems to have come to them." He gestured at the paperback. "Same as everyone else."
"That's bleak."
"Little bit." But he was smiling. "What's the fantasy about? If you don't mind me asking."
She explained it. The hero who appeared from the tree line like he'd been waiting for her. The slow burn between them as he taught her to see the magic. The secrets he was keeping, and the ones she didn't know she had. Clint asked questions, good ones, the kind that made her think harder about things she'd written instinctively. He didn't laugh. He didn't tell her it sounded like every other fantasy romance on the market.
Somewhere in the middle of explaining, she realized he wasn't just listening. His eyes were on her face, following the way her hands moved when she talked. She lost her train of thought for a second then found it again.
By the time she finished, something in Jen had loosened. Not because he'd given her answers, but because he'd listened like what she was making mattered, even the messy, unfinished, not-supposed-to-exist version of it.
"You already know what you want to do," Clint said. "You're just afraid of what happens if you actually do it."
"It's not that simple."
"It's exactly that simple." He held her gaze. "It's just not easy."
She was about to respond when a voice cut through the coffee shop noise.
"Oh my gosh. Oh my gosh, oh my gosh."
A woman had stopped beside their table. Midfifties, vacation tan, oversized sunglasses pushed up into blond hair. She was staring at Jen with the intensity of someone who had just recognized a celebrity.
"You're Amber Carr, aren't you? I knew it. I said to my husband, I said, that woman at the coffee shop looks just like Amber Carr, and he said I was being ridiculous, but I'm never wrong about these things."
Her face warmed. Surprise, a flush of pride she hadn't expected. She'd been nobody for an hour. Now she was Amber Carr again.
"I've read every single Clementine Fields mystery," the woman continued, not waiting for confirmation. "Every single one. I started with A Bitter Brew in Brambleton and I've been hooked ever since. My book club did Murder at the May Ball last spring, and half of us thought the gardener did it, but I knew it was the professor's wife. Something about the way she kept bringing up the orchids."
Across the table, Clint was listening to all of this. Jen kept her eyes on the woman.
"Thank you," Jen said. "That really means a lot. The orchid detail, I worked so hard on that clue, hoping someone would catch it. You have a good eye."
"And the new one, when is the new one coming out? We've been waiting ages. Clementine and Detective Stovers, are they finally going to get together? My friend Linda says there's too much romantic tension to keep them apart much longer, and I have to agree."
"I'm still working on it," Jen said, managing a real smile. "But I promise it'll be worth the wait. And thank you. Readers like you are the reason I get to keep doing this."
"Well, don't keep us waiting too long." The woman reached into her purse and pulled out a receipt and a pen. "Could I get an autograph? For my friend Linda. She's going to die when she finds out I met you."
Jen signed the receipt. Smiled for the photo the woman insisted on taking. She told the woman how much it meant to meet readers like her, how book clubs were her favorite audiences, and promised Linda would get her answers soon.
When the woman left at last—still talking, waving the signed receipt like a trophy—the ease between them had shifted.
"Amber Carr," Clint said quietly. He wasn't looking at her like she was famous. He was rethinking her. "That's a big deal."
"Most days it doesn't feel like that." She tried for lightness. "Most days it feels like deadlines."
